If there is one song that epitomises the month I’ve had it’s the song by Green Day called “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. This has to be the most brutal month I have ever experienced and one that I’ll outline in this post. Mostly so that I can process it and get it out of my head.
I’m going to use the old “Good, Bad, and Ugly” format because despite the majority of the month being a cesspool I feel I have to start with the positives and work down to the crap pond rather than the other way around.
The Good:
The Good never happened at the start of the month so it’s not like it was a month of joy that turned to crap. In fact the month started crap and the Good was just interspersed throughout. But the Good was great while it lasted.
Magazine delivery:
This month saw our second release of magazines for a client to be delivered. This time around I enacted a plan that I’d been wanting to employ since we got these magazines. What was awesome was it panned out exactly how I planned it.
Having the freedom to do this from my manager makes me so happy because in the past my managers have wanted to get their hands dirty and get involved. When I have the freedom to implement my plans the projects always go well. I even proved that with a previous company I worked with but they didn’t respond well to my plans.
Received our wreck:
So in December my wife was involved in a crash. A lady had pulled out of a Stop sign controlled intersection into my wife’s path. This left my with with nowhere to go other than into the side of that car.
We’ve been fighting the insurance company for 10 months to try and get progress on our claim but they are completely incompetent. In fact I’ve done most of their legwork myself.
Anyway I got to pick up the wreck to which I promptly removed the running boards and stuck them on our replacement ute (which we’ve paid for out of our own pocket).
New takeaway:
A new Indian/Pakistani fusion takeaway opened up not far from home. I tried their Biryani which was amazing but I also had their Lahori Charga last night and it was just as good, although the Biryani was better. If you’re ever in New Plymouth go to Westown to Shan on Tukapa Street. They are fantastic and I can’t recommend them enough. Their Lamb Vindaloo is the best as well.
Dire Straits:
Dire Straits has been the first band I ever liked. The are the only band I’ve ever had posters of. I love them.
Well things got interesting last night when I went to pick up my meal from Shan. On the pub next door to Shan there was a poster for a Dire Straits tribute band that will be playing there in November. I’ve now got two tickets to go see this band play on the 23 November at Ate Fourty One on Tukapa Street. I’m so excited and I hope the band does well. It’ll also be a date night with Mrs Wookie, something we haven’t done in a while due to life.
The Bad:
Life can’t all be good apparently and so the bad is there just to bring us crashing down to earth. Weirdly enough the bad wasn’t that bad but nothing short of annoying. In fact if I’m being honest there was only one thing that I could claim as being bad this month. But it SUCKED so bad.
The Wreck:
So now we have the wreck at our place the insurance company sent us details of the payout. This should have been good, although I’m still worried about accepting the excess because I have a sneaking suspicion they’re going to try and weasel their way out of it. I hope they try in some respects because I want to take them down.
But I noticed something massively bad on the statement. To see why you need to understand why we decided to take the wreck. You see back around March I got the assessment for the wreck which quoted $800 for the wreck. I said we’d take it and when I did that, unbeknown to me this triggers a sale request for Turners who then gives the insurance company a price that they’d buy the wreck for which came in at $3250. NONE of this was ever explained and so we said if that’s the case then sod off, we’re not taking the wreck.
Well, after the hassles and all that with the claim we received an e-mail stating in black and white that the insurance company would give us the wreck for $800. I called them to check if this was actually the case and they said it was and so I told them that for $800 we WOULD accept the wreck.
WELL, the invoice came in and now they’re going to charge us $3250 for the wreck. I sent them an email which copied in the Insurance Ombudsman that this is unacceptable and they can get stuffed if we’re paying that when they told us (and I confirmed) that we could have the wreck for $800. So now we’re just waiting on that to be sorted. I swear, insurance companies are the biggest scam on the planet.
If they don’t come to the plate I’m sending them an invoice for my time and for storage fees which I feel I’m entitled to as their wreck is sitting at my property which I’m the legal owner of.
The UGLY:
And now we come to the worst part of the month. This is the whole reason for this post and the reason I want September 2024 to kiss my fat hairy buttocks and sod off.
I’m actually going to work backwards because… well you’ll see why…
Brain Bleed:
A couple of weeks ago a friend got a brain bleed. They got to it and fixed it up and that was great. However, since then she’s ended up with clots in her brain and as you could imagine it’s changed her.
A Mercy Death:
2 weeks before my friend’s brain bleed another of our friends died. While sad it was merciful in many ways as she had terminal cancer and was on the downward slope.
This will sound weird to many but, as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, death doesn’t cause fear. Ecclesiastes 9:5 shows that the dead are conscious of nothing therefore can’t help us, harm us, or be tormented. But Jesus referred to death as a sleep. John 5:28 says the dead will rise so we don’t fear death and we have a great hope for the future.
So for us her death isn’t bad but it does still suck as we have lost a dear friend.
My Brother In-Law’s Suicide:
And now we have the worst part. In fairness he committed suicide on the 31 August, but I didn’t find out about it until the 3rd September. What was weird was that dad told me in a comment that for all intents and purposes would have been a throw away comment.
My sister and brother in law both rejected the religions of our respective parents and basically became agnostic. That’s fine, that’s their decisions and one I accept. But what was interesting was the funeral.
Say what you want about religion but it offers hope. For us as Jehovah’s Witnesses we have the hope of the resurrection whereby after God (Jehovah) destroys all human governments and replaces them with his own government ruled from heaven, he will undo all the bad things that have happened since the sin in the Garden of Eden. One of those bad things is death so not only will he end death, he will bring back to life everyone who died before Armageddon.
For a number of religions, such as the Catholic faith my brother in law’s parents followed, they have the hope of life in heaven.
Whatever the faith there is some hope for life after death for want of a better term. But my sister and brother in law had no hope. For them death is the end and that’s that. In fact at the end of ther “funeral” my sister literally said:
Well, that’s over. Time to get on with our lives.
That is single-handed the most sad statement I have ever heard. It’s all over so we just get on with it. That basically makes life seem purposeless.
I’m not here to mock anyone’s beliefs or push my own beliefs. I just found it sad that not only have we lost a really good man to the “Black Dog”, but my sister has no hope for the future. I think that’s the saddest thing ever.
Conclusion:
And that, dear reader, is why I can’t wait for September to end. I look forward to Tuesday when October comes. I see the new month as a good point to move on.
What’s happened has happened and I can’t change any of that. What I can change is my attitude towards what happens from NOW. Today is my CHOICE and no one else’s. How I choose to see today will either paralyse me or propel me forward.
I choose to be propelled forward. Bad things happen but I’ve never let it get in the way. Sure, the glass might be half empty but I choose to not only see it as half full, but I enjoyed drinking the first half.
Please, if you’re struggling with mental help, seek help. That might be professional or it might be a great mate. However you go about it and whoever you do it with, just remember ALL bad things come to an end. Just don’t make it an end like my brother in law. The world needs you in it despite whatever your head tells you.
Incidentally, this week has been Mental Health Awareness Week, at least here in New Zealand. I’ve purposely left it to the end of the working week to make this post. I did so because I didn’t want it to be just another Mental Health Week post that is most likely going to pop up on social media.
Instead, this is going to be the start of me exploring my own mental health. I’m already exploring my physical health but it makes sense that to have good physical health I need to have good mental health.
So I think for my own personal journey I need to write daily and do so with cander. I want to see if it makes a difference to how I feel and thus how I motivate myself. Let me know what you think or better yet, let me know your story.
PS:
I’m so sorry for the length of this post. I kind of got lost in it.
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